Moir leaves Mail in PR mire

The journalist at the centre of the public backlash against the Daily Mail over an article about Stephen Gately's untimely death has left the newspaper in a public relations quagmire, after the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) ordered it to respond to a record number of complaints.

In her column in the Daily Mail, Jan Moir described the circumstances behind the Boyzone singer's death as more than a little sleazy and also questioned the verdict of the post-mortem that he died of natural causes.

The PCC received more than 21,000 complaints from angry readers, causing the media watchdog's website to crash and prompting a wave of criticism from high-profile celebrities such as Stephen Fry and Derren Brown.

Although there was nothing specific in the article that could clearly be identified as gay bashing, Moir managed to open a PR can of worms by daring to comment on what might have happened when Gately and his civil partner Andrew Cowles invited a young Bulgarian man to their apartment just hours before Gately's death.

Moir blames an orchestrated social media campaign, notably through microblogging site Twitter, for the colossal backlash.

But on this point few would disagree, as the whole episode clearly demonstrated how the muscle of the traditional media had finally met its match with the emerging power of social networking sites.